


wake my spirit cold

by daughterofrohan



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, F/M, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, author wrote this with a concussion please excuse any and all typos, christmas through the ages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:39:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9019171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daughterofrohan/pseuds/daughterofrohan
Summary: let me back down in a place i know//Christmas hasn't always been perfect. But it's always been theirs.





	

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. i've been working on this instead of my thesis for the better part of december and i'm SO glad i managed to finish it so i could get it up for tonight!  
> 2\. writing with a concussion is way harder than you think it is  
> 3\. if you recognize it, i don't own it  
> 4\. in typical Jess fashion, i stole the title from a song (check out Spirit Cold by Tall Heights!)  
> 5\. come say hi on tumblr @natrasharomanova

_“She’s asking for you.”_

_“Why would she want to see me?”_

_Coulson sighs patiently. “Maybe she just wants a familiar face.”_

_“After I lied to her? I told her we wouldn’t hurt her, Phil. And now they have her locked up down there like an animal.”_

_“She’s safe.”_

_“She doesn’t know that.”_

_“She will if you tell her.”_

_“Fine.” He throws his hands up in the air in frustration. “Fine. I’ll go talk to her. But if this goes to shit I want it on your head. I’m in deep enough as it is.”_

_“She just needs a friend, Clint.” Coulson’s hand on his shoulder is firm, gentle, steady. “You of all people have to know what that’s like.”_

* * *

“Merry fucking Christmas,” she says bitterly.

Clint can’t help but laugh. They’ve been lying in a snowdrift for the past five hours, waiting painstakingly for their mark to arrive.

“I have a bottle of scotch back at the hotel,” he says for incentive.

“If we make it back.”

“You’re just a ray of sunshine, you know that Romanoff?”

“Movement on the path,” she says suddenly, all laser focus.

“Copy that.”

“Your shot, Hawkeye.”

Clint holds his breath, staring down his scope at the face of their target. Three. He breathes. Two. He exhales. One. He looses the arrow. Two hundred feet below them, their mark slumps to the ground.

Natasha shakes the snow out of her hair, stomping her feet in an effort to get the warmth back into them. “I hate Russia.”

* * *

“Shit,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

“I think that’s called a concussion,” Natasha says drily, lifting her feet gingerly out of the pile of vomit.

“Shit,” he moans again. “Sorry, Nat.”

“Apologize to me later.” She takes on a clinical tone as she begins to assess his head for external signs of damage. “What was your mother’s name?”

“Edith Barton.”

“Handler?”

“Phil Coulson.”

“What country are we in?”

“Armenia?”

“Argentina,” she responds. “Close in name, halfway across the globe on a map. But I’ll let you have that one if you can tell me today’s date.”

“December 25th?”

“Bingo. Any chance you know where the nearest hospital is?”

“Not a clue.”

She signs dramatically as a cover for her relief. He’s alert, at least for now. He’s okay. “Didn't have high hopes for that one. I’ll get SHIELD on the line. Try not to cause any more damage.”

* * *

 

_“I’m here for Romanoff.”_

_“She’s in solitary,” a stern-faced nurse tells him, pursing her lips together in disapproval, probably at the fact that he has the nerve to come strutting in here to demand the release of a dangerous criminal. But she’s not dangerous. Not according to him, anyway. Not according to Phil._

_“Director’s orders.” If this gets back to Fury he really is dead, but he can’t find it in himself to give a damn. “Let me see her.”_

_“She broke another nurse’s arm and spit in the psychologist’s face.”_

_Clint takes a step closer, eyes flicking briefly to her name tag, using his height to his advantage as he towers over her. “I won’t ask you again, Sheila. Let me in or I’ll break the fucking door down myself.”_

_She glares at him distastefully but snatches a set of keys off of the desk behind her. “Right this way, Agent Barton.” He doesn’t miss the bitterness that fills her voice when she says his name._

_“If she breaks your nose you can tell everyone I warned you,” Sheila says as she pushes the door open._

_He’s met with silence. Silence and the soft thunk of the door falling shut behind him. She’s huddled on a bare mattress in the corner, eyes wide and red-rimmed, her face covered in the crusted blood of scratches that have half dried. It’s the straightjacket that causes his blood to boil in anger. Better than handcuffs, he supposes, but it still gets its message across loud and clear. She’s mentally deranged, it screams. She’s a prisoner here._

_“Let’s get you out of this.” He crosses the room in a few short strides and sinks to his knees beside her, tugging at the ties that keep her arms pinned down._

_“What are you doing?” Her voice is calm, even._

_“Getting you out of here.”_

_“Where are you taking me?” There’s an edge of fear, carefully masked, but he can hear it. He wonders if she meant him to._

_“SHIELD will get you set up with a place to live soon. In the meantime, you can come home with me.”_

_“Am I allowed to leave base?”_

_Clint shrugs. “I don’t care.”_

 

 

* * *

“Thanks for bringing me here,” she says softly, gazing up at the tree that towers above them.

“I can’t believe you’ve never been,” he answers. “After all these years in New York.”

“Just when I thought I’d seen everything,” she jokes.

“Not everything,” he says hoarsely.

And there, in the open, with the crowd pressing in on them from all sides, under the dazzling lights of the Rockefeller Christmas tree, he kisses her for the first time.

She stiffens when his lips touch his and for a second he thinks he’s read her wrong, that he’s made a mistake. But then she melts, leaning in to him, her lips soft against his.

“We can’t have this,” she tells him later, even as they lie tangled in his bed, her head resting on his chest. “People like us don’t get happy endings.”

He presses a kiss to her bare shoulder. “Why not?”

* * *

“Miami,” she says as soon as he puts the phone to his ear.

“What about it?”

“I have an hour to kill before my connecting flight to Brussels.”

“I don’t leave for Warsaw for another forty-five.”

“Meet me at the airport bar.” He’s already moving even before the line goes dead in his ear.

She’s already there when he arrives, half obscured by the darkness of the shadowy corner she’s chosen, the remains of one gin and tonic on the bar in front of her and a second in her hand. “Took you long enough.”

“Are you drunk?”

She slides a hand onto his thigh, fingers curling into the denim of his jeans. “Not yet.”

He wants hours, days, weeks, _years_. It’s a cruel joke to think that all he gets is the next twenty minutes before his flight boards. When she speaks he thinks, not for the first time, that she can read his mind.

“Next Christmas we’re taking the day off.”

* * *

_“Can I get you anything?” he asks her as she trails behind him, moving slowly like a wounded animal. “Tea? Coffee?” He opens the fridge and wrinkles his nose. “Week-old pizza?”_

_“I’ll pass on the pizza,” she responds cautiously._

_“Anything to drink?”_

_“Vodka.”_

_He stares at her._

_“Kidding. Coffee’s fine.”_

_He can’t reconcile this joking side of her with the cold-blooded assassin he was told about during his months of briefings. When he tells her this much, she shrugs offhandedly. “We’ve all got the same personality in this line of work, don’t we? We have to laugh so we don’t cry.”_

_All of a sudden, it hits him. Her humour is her last line of defense. She’s just like him. Of course she is. No wonder he couldn’t shoot her; he saw too much of himself in her. It would have been like putting an arrow through his own heart. There was a time he gladly would have done just that, but not anymore._

_"It’s Christmas,” she says softly._

_Clint turns his attention away from the coffeemaker to see her peering into his living room, her eyes shining as she takes in the light of his tree._

_“Yeah,” he says gruffly. The flight from Cairo has him so jet lagged it takes him a moment to remember the date. December 25 th. “Guess it is.”_

_He presses a mug into her hand, watching as she closes her eyes and inhales the scent of the coffee. He knows she hasn’t let her guard down for a minute since she stepped inside his apartment, but for a brief moment she looks at peace and it’s worth whatever shit he may have to take when Coulson and Fury realize that he took her off base without permission._

_“You hungry at all?” He nudges her shoulder and feels her tense briefly beside him._

_“Depends on whether the only option is week-old pizza.”_

_“We can order new pizza?”_

_The corners of her mouth turn up slightly in what might be the beginnings of a smile. “Thanks, but I’m really just tired.”_

_“Right,” he nods down the hallway in the direction of his bedroom. “You can take my bed and I’ll crash-”_

_“I’ll sleep here,” she interrupts quickly, shrugging one shoulder absently when he stares at her. “I like looking at the lights.”_

_“If you run away on me in the middle of the night they’ll-”_

_“You’re the first person who hasn’t tried to kill me in over two months. I’m good to stay here for a while.”_

* * *

 

“Maria just gave me these.”

In her hands are two wrapped packages; simple brown paper tied with a red ribbon. He only knows one person who wraps like that. It’s his trademark. Or, well, it _was_. He glances at the package held tightly in her left hand. _To Natasha, All my love, Phil._

Her eyes are wet when she looks up at him. “What do we do, Clint?”

He takes the package she extends towards him, glancing down at the writing. The too-familiar scrawl is like a punch in the gut. _To Clint, For Vienna, Phil_. There’s only one thing they can do.

“I guess we open them.”

 _For your days off_ , reads the card that slides out of the package as Natasha unwraps it. The thick wool sweater is soft to the touch; a muted green colour to match that of her eyes. “He always told me I wore too much black,” she says quietly, clutching the gift to her chest like a lifeline.

Clint tears the paper off his own gift to reveal a nondescript cardboard box, opening it to pull out a ceramic coffee mug. The mug itself is simple, but the outside is painted with the vivid colours of a sunset across an all too familiar skyline.

“Budapest,” Natasha breathes over his shoulder. “Why did he write Vienna?”

“Phil and I were on assignment in Vienna and he broke every single coffee mug in the hotel room.” He smiles wistfully. “I just wanted a damn cup of coffee.”

“He loved you so much,” Natasha says quietly, leaning against his shoulder, and he’s not sure if she’s holding him up or if he’s holding her up, or if they’re both leaning on each other. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” he manages, his chest tight with emotion. “I know.”

* * *

_“I feel like a little kid,” she says as she makes her way out of the bathroom, drowning in an oversized pair of Clint’s old sweats._

_He can’t quite suppress his smile at the sight of her._

_“What?” she demands._

_“I’ve just never seen a deadly assassin look less threatening, that’s all.”_

_“You want deadly? I’ll show you deadly?”_

_“Relax,” he laughs. “We’ll find something in your size tomorrow if it’s really that big of a deal.”_

_Her almost-smile is a little wider this time. “It’s fine. Thank you.”_

_“These are for you.” He passes her a stack of worn, mismatched blankets. “If you get too cold there’s-”_

_“I’m fine.”_

_“You say that a lot.”_

_“So?”_

_“I’m not sure it’s true.”_

_The almost-smile fades quicker than it arrived. “If I say it enough maybe eventually it’ll be true.”_

_The air around them is thick, tense in a way that makes him uncomfortable. He doesn’t know what to say to make her feel better. He doesn’t know if she wants to feel better. He nods in the direction of his room again. “If you need me I’m just…”_

_He trails off, not sure what he was going to offer, and holds her gaze for a brief moment before turning away. Her whisper behind him is so soft that at first he thinks he imagined it._  
_“Merry Christmas.”_

_He pauses. Turns back towards her to see her still standing there in the place he left her, looking like a child as his old sweatpants pool around her feet. This time the smile almost reaches her eyes._

_“Merry Christmas, Romanoff.”_

_“Natasha,” she corrects him softly._

_“Merry Christmas, Natasha.”_

* * *

_Stop running_.

The text comes from an unknown number, but she knows who it has to be. It’s followed almost immediately by a second message. _Come home_.

The walls of the compound are pristine, empty, cold. There’s no sign of life within them. There hasn’t been for a while. And no wonder, she thinks. It used to be a refuge, but now it’s a ghost town; a place that used to be safe for all of them is now safe for none of them because they might see each other there. The world’s greatest team, turned mortal enemies.

Fitting, she thinks, trailing one hand along the cold wall beside her as she walks. Everything else she loves has already turned to dust. It only stands to reason that the world would take this from her as well.

A flicker from the end of the hallway catches her eye and she freezes, breath caught in her throat. All of a sudden she’s running, flying, racing desperately towards the light. It’s a flicker of a hope, a child’s foolish dream, but she _has_ to believe.

She freezes when she turns the corner and sees the tree there, shining softly in the otherwise dark room, its glow reflected in the window. The smell hits her like a wave, brings her back to that first Christmas in Clint’s apartment in New York so many years ago. It’s all she can do not to tear up.

“Merry Christmas, Nat.”

He’s there when she turns around; a Santa hat placed precariously on his head, that crooked smile she loves plastered across his face.

“Clint,” she whispers. “Oh my god, Clint.”

“You’re early.” He takes a step closer to pull her into a bone-crushing hug. “I wasn’t expecting everyone for another couple of hours at least.”

“I came as soon as I got your…wait. Everyone?”

“Yeah,” he shrugs, leaning back just far enough to see her face. “Invited the whole gang. I know it’s been…well, you know, but I figured….war’s stopped for Christmas before, hasn’t it?”

“And then they all went back to killing each other the next day. That part of the story always gets left out.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “They did. But we don’t have to.”

"Yeah." She leans her head against his shoulder, his touch a familiar comfort in the empty room that holds too many ghosts. “I guess we don’t.”

 

 

 


End file.
